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Alaa Abd el-Fattah, the British-Egyptian political dissident held in a Cairo jail for more than five years, has reached such a state of despair over the UK’s inability to secure his release that he has contemplated renouncing both his British and Egyptian citizenships, letters written by him reveal.
His family have given permission for some of his private letters to be published to show his situation and his concern for his 68-year-old mother, on hunger strike seeking his release.
The letters came as the family said they had been encouraged by reports that the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, spent most of his meeting with his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo last week making the case for El-Fattah’s release. Britain has ben denied consular access to El-Fattah.
The UK’s envoy to the UN in Geneva, Simon Manley, also publicly criticised Egypt on Monday, saying: “The continued detention of Alaa Abd el-Fattah, detained for spreading false news, who has now served his five-year sentence including pre-trial detention, is unacceptable.” Manley urged Egypt to end the practice of rotating detainees in pre-trial detention.
El-Fattah’s letters chart his initial optimism at Lammy’s appointment falling away as the Labour government fails to secure his release, and a growing feeling that only the prime minister can elevate his plight to the level required.
The perception that the Foreign Office does not have the leverage is reflected in his mother now protesting daily outside Downing Street rather than the Foreign Office. She has lost 21kg on a 122-day hunger strike and her GP has told her her sugar levels put her in serious danger of a heart attack.
He wrote to his aunt Ahdaf in August: “I saw David Lammy finally, an impressive man. Of course we [previously] had a foreign secretary who looked big and impressive so I know that’s not the measure of anything. I just thought I’d grab any reason to feel some optimism.”
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But on 29 September, as it became clear he would not be released after completing his five-year sentence, he wrote to his sister Laila: “I don’t understand how my spirit will tolerate us going into a new form of illegal incarceration – I don’t think I’ve even absorbed the fact that the regime sentenced me twice to five years and I actually served them. In any case, let’s see what the prosecutor-general [of Egypt] will say, and what the intentions of His Majesty’s new government are.”
On 4 December, in a short communal letter to the whole of his famly, he reflected that Keir Starmer met the Chinese president, Xi Jinping “and spoke about the comrade from Hong Kong [Jimmy Lai].
“I wonder if he’s paying any attention to me. I’ve said from the start that if they can’t or don’t want to or don’t care to argue about a consular visit then one can’t look to them for a release, because it means they basically don’t recognise me as citizen and they endorse the local authority not recognising me as a human being.
“So probably the next step is to give up both nationalities and live without either (optimistic, of course, since this assumes life in some future stage).”
Briefly, on 30 December he wrote : “How are you all? I hope the new year finds you well. Of course the fact that a whole year has passed under these conditions does not engender optimism or inspire hope. But, anyway, let’s hope it will be a good year for Syria and lighter on the Palestinians.”
On 6 January he wrote about measuring the passage of time by observing a trio of cats that visit him in his cell: “Heba came back and visited me yesterday, Wes is living with us, and Rihana drops in from time to time.
“Their dramas used to be teenage dramas; we weren’t part of them but they happened around us, so we had an imagined narrative. Now they come back hungry or hurt or sick or withdrawn or emotional: adult dramas that happen outside our cell so we no longer really understand what’s going on.”
